I think the sheep metaphor should probably be dropped. What's wrong with being a follower rather than a leader when things are going pretty well? For that matter, what better about being a dog than a sheep?

Our society places a lot of value on being leaders, being independent. Which is fine, but everything in balance. Sheep following each other work better as a group than a group of animals which are independent (hence the metaphor of herding cats.) Teaching everyone that they are a unique little snowflake who should reject all authority is good in moderation, but I suspect we're going a little overboard, telling people they need to question anything they hear and accept none of it, be it doctors telling them they need to get vaccinated, be it people saying "Hey, uh, taxes are kind of necessary for nice things" or be it "don't act like a fucking asshole in public."

At a minimum, why do we need to compare people to animals. Leaders vs followers is not a terribly complex concept. I don't think we need a metaphor, all it seems to do is make being a follower seem unattractive compared to being, I dunno, a wolf or sheepdog or tiger other animal you'd rather be compared to.

Personally I suspect that anyone who has amassed such riches is a selfish person. It's not like you wake up one day and suddenly are a multimillionaire. I don't know any millionaires personally though, so who knows.

I feel like you could apply this as a meta argument: not every godwin instance is bad.

It's clearly meant to be fun and engage people in scientific research, not replace reading actual journal articles. The main benefit might be getting researchers to think about how to present their ideas in different ways. It's an issue with many scientists.

If I asked a friend how his research was going, he would start rattling off gene name acronyms and abbreviations for experiments and I would get totally lost a minute into it.
Interkin3tic: "Hey man, how's the research going?"
Friend:"Well we did a co-ip of MAD when conjugated at the kinetochore of a meiosis haploid culture with GFP tail swap nup52 and then quantified pixel intensity based on subresolution microscopy on the spinning disc and found the number was 410 instead of 320."
Interkin3tic: "Uh... oh. You still work on plants, right?"

That sounds like something like he would say and I would get out of it about as much as you got out of it. And I was familiar with his research: I proofread his papers and discussed it with him regularly. We're not the best communicators, we get way too technical way too quick. Making us communicate without technical terms is a good way to encourage better communication. And without communication, there's little point to science.

That said, I would never want to see him dance anything, let alone plant molecular biology.

I vaguely recall an instance where protesters or activists were arrested by police over trumped up charges of pirating Windows. I can't find anything on google, or recall any more details like whether it was in Russia or here, so take that as you will.

Personally, I get a sort of satisfaction out of rooting my phone when samsung or whoever clearly doesn't want me to. Same with jailbreaking. After installing cyanogenmod on my samsung, and after jailbreaking, I really didn't do much with either. If I wasn't flipping the bird to someone telling me how to use my stuff, it became a lot more boring.

It's nerdy and ineffective, I know.

Actually, for most people it's cheaper, since the big networks don't give you a discount for buying your own phone. If you're talking about switching from AT&T or verizon, then sure it would be cheaper, but staying within those two as most people do, no, it's cheaper to subsidize a phone, since you pay the same price anyway.

That's samsungs very annoying way of telling you to root it, I suppose. Or buy another phone. You can get titaniumbackup and freeze those programs once you do. I was annoyed by this too on my S2.

I'm sure she's taking a lot more shit in the press than your average Secretary does, especially when you consider the ACA battle. Not saying feel sorry for her, just that she probably thought it would be a cushy job, and she instead deals with a lot of outrage, both manufactured and real. Maybe she means accountable for her expectations, not accountable as in what you or I would consider accountable.

Just to be clear, I think that's a function of online services, not google specifically, and not android. Facebook is worse. It keeps asking me where I work, where I went to high school etc. It clearly has enough information to guess, as it makes suggestions which are pretty spot on based on my friends' data.

My android phone, I never get nuisances like that. My ipad is actually worse. It keeps asking me to sign in with gamecenter.

Not to say that google is superior, just that online services you use for "free" will always pester you like virtual paparazzi.

Is it actually more litigious today? I get the vague sense that predatory lawyers have moved onto greener pastures, though I have no expertise with law or medicine.

Not direct greed, but doctors telling idiot patients "no, you can't have that: you don't need it" often lose those idiot patients. And the money that comes from it.

Why not? Seems to me that CEOs are basically celebrities. They don't directly generate anything that is worth what they are paid. It's their name that gets other people excited and gets the money flowing. Keeping it secret doesn't make a whole lot of sense if the only reason they're considering Elop is to make the stock price go up. "Elop!?! WOW!!! I KNOW THAT NAME, BUY BUY BUY!!! I hear he's already made more money for MS than the outgoing CEO did!!!"

I mean, it's not like he's good actually leading companies.

They don't keep it super secret which celebrity actors they've hired for movies for the same reason. They want buzz.

Wrong agriculture business. This is antibiotic resistance. Monsanto is arguably causing herbicide and pesticide resistance, although such claims are stupid: they made the herbicides and pesticides, and they worked. It wasn't going to last forever if it was used widely, and if it wasn't used widely to make cheap foodstock, what's the bloody point?

They even took steps to limit that much. The terminator seed technology was partly intended to prevent contamination: if the plants can't breed, they're less likely to mix with wild species and contaminate them. Obviously they had a lot of financial interest in it, both because if resistance gets into the pest populations, that's going to make their product worthless. And in response to the controversy and accusations that it would screw over farmers, Monsanto never actually put terminator seeds on the market.

Anyway, pointing fingers is only so helpful, even at the agricultural entities that ARE driving antibiotic resistance. At this point, we know the looming disaster. It's not rocket science or even climate science either. This is high school biology. Businesses can be expected to faithfully act without any regard other than immediate profit. Ignorant patients will always find greedy doctors willing to give them antibiotics they don't need for diseases that aren't bacterial. Fixing the problem won't happen voulontarily. We need legislation to prevent milk from cows treated with antibiotics from being sold in supermarkets cheaper than untreated milk. Same with other livestock. It's an externalized cost: there's an advantage to it that needs to be taken away. We also need to strip the medical licenses of doctors who give out antibiotics for the cold. Either they're shockingly ignorant of the last 20 years of research and aren't fit to be doctors, or they're intentionally contributing to a real health hazard and should face criminal charges.

And if you've ever watched to catch a predator, the guys they catch aren't exactly the James Bonds of pedophilia. One guy for instance brought a birthday cake saying "Happy 13th birthday."

Had to stop watching after that. Depressing on so many levels.